Is NVidia going to be the "new" Chipzilla??

[Whitedog]

With 3dfx out of the picture, what's to stop them? Sure, other companies have 3D Chips, but are hardly anywhere near NVidia's heels.

With GeForce3 coming out, They are basically dethrowning their own product as king! (GeForce2 Ultra)

Do you all remember the days of paying $500-$700 if you wanted the fasted CPU? And Not being able to buy a descent CPU for $200-300? I do. Of course, with AMD and Intel on level playing fields, CPU's are very affordable. I am seeing a trend in Video Card prices...

IT's not going to be long before you won't be able to buy a video card that hasn't been out for a year for less than $300...

I can smell it. :|

 

[hans007]

first off, there is still ATI, and well consumers aren't dumb enough to spend that much money if thereis a viable alternative. Besides most people wouldn't benefit from a higher speed 3d accelerator since most people dont play games. Everyone benefits from buying a faster processor because it speeds up everything , which is the reason intel can sell a $600 processor to the masses, while the masses will never choose to all buy a $600 graphics card.

 

[Vegito]

They're better in the gaming community which is a small percentage to the world.. ie like overclocking, small percentage to the world. And as said, not all has 600 to spend every 6 month... I do but damn, I wouldn't really pay more then 150 for v-card. But for business world, dual/quad monitors are more important then speed... cheapness is also important

 

[Whitedog]

Yes, true. That's not my point. My point is... if NVidia has the "by far the best" 3D video card, what's to stop them from Charging $600 for it if no one else has anything that will compare to it? ...and for them to hold out on dropping the price? Sure, there are tons of standard performance video cards for the masses...

ATI? Well, for now, they are doing pretty good, but if NVidia keeps going at their pace, They will be so far ahead of the game, they will be all alone... Large and In Charge... = $$$$$$ for their stuff.

 

[kyoshozx]

I Agree with whitedog, it seems more and more like nvidia is becoming intel. Where they would charge insane prices because they had the product with the highest performance with no competition on the high end. Sure ATI is still there, but do they have a product that can compete with NVidia's highend? Sure Radeon is a good card but it's performance is more along the lines of a geforce2 and not geforce2 ultra or a geforce3. In short if you wanted the FASTEST video card you can only go with Nvidia, just like in the past if you wanted the fastest cpu intel was your only choice.

I think what whitedog is trying to say that the costs of highend video cards are on a rise because of the lack of competition against nvidia. I'm sure we all remembered getting the fastest video card from nvidia for under 350 bucks when it was released. TNT, TNT2, Geforce SDR, Geforce DDR. But take a look at the pricing for the ultra, it's been 6 months and the card still costs 350.

Our hopes of video card prices dropping is if ATI starts releasing video cards in a timely fashion with reasonably prices. As for right now I can't see any other company actually challenging Nvidia's position.

 

[gnognugs]

The prices of video cards are getting higher for one reason.
The demand for video cards supports it.

 

[Malichite]

While I agree that companies make pricing choices based upon thier competition and current market situations, the real reason it is $529 (Prophet 3) is that its a damn complicated chip. The GeForce3 has 57 million transistors and most of it is dedicated to logic, thus the majority of the chip isn't just internal cache. The Pentium 4 I believe is currently sitting in the mid forty's when it comes to number of transistors. The key with all silicon these days is the yeild. The larger the number of transistors or the larger the area of the die the lower the yield. While it is true that improvements in the process help this, typically the yield on new silicon is relatively low in comparison to more mature processes like the GF2 GTS. Currently NVidia is out performing Moore's law and I for one am pleased to see this. While there are plenty of people out there that intend to wait, I think the sheer amount of interested generated so far indicates a bright future for the GF3. ATI will respond in turn, but last I saw on their unofficial roadmap on rage3D the Radeon II wasn't slated til a June rel with real supply in July/Aug. The biggest thorn in ATI's side is their poor driver support. I bought a Radeon 64 last Aug and I lasted up til Christmas before I got fed up with the driver supprot and sold my card in anticipation of the GF3. We will see how the GF3 support fairs, but using the usually NVidia distribution methods, at least I get to play with a new NED every few weeks. LOL.

 

[ISAslot]

After all the dust settles after their new chip is released and ati comes out with the radeon 2 then we will see...
Is there much info out on the radeon 2? I haven't looked around too hard.
One thing i don't like about ati is it seems like they are sooo slow, especially when it comes to mailing stuff out, be it cards or anything else. I remember I was on backorder for the longest time for a 128 aiw a few yrs back... and if you send them some request they'll send you the replacement cd, etc, in 4 to 6 weeks! I sent for a replacement game that didn't work, needless to say i didn't get it, it's been a yr or so, I wonder if it's still on it's way....